The reality star also shares how she broke the ice with President Donald Trump with a 'Celebrity Apprentice' joke.
Kim Kardashian West and Alice Marie Johnson are forever linked!
The pair met for the first time just ahead of their Today show interview with Hoda Kotb, which aired on Thursday morning. During the interview, Kardashian West explained how she went about helping Johnson to get pardoned after her lifetime sentence for a first-time, non-violent drug offense.
“It became this mission that I just didn’t want to give up. I think to some people it might seem like, ‘OK, Kim made a phone call to the President, showed up,’ [but] we had been in talks and working on this for seven months,” the 37-year-old reality star explained. “It wasn’t an instant thing.”
In late May, Kardashian West met with President Donald Trump to present the case to him. Prior to that meeting, she’d reached out to his daughter, Ivanka Trump.
“I called Ivanka, and we had a really great conversation about women and wanting to help each other,” Kim said. “I knew that she would have understood Alice, and she immediately was so receptive and so great.”
When it came time to visit the Oval Office, which Kardashian West described as “overwhelming in the most amazing way,” she had the perfect ice breaker.
“I first said that I am here because I really want to know why you kicked Khloe [Kardashian] off The Apprentice, and he laughed and it broke the ice and then he got focused,” Kardashian West quipped of her sister’s time on Trump’s reality competition show.
Though she noted that her famous family is “always really supportive,” Kardashian West confessed that there were people around her who discouraged her from visiting the White House.
“To me, this has nothing to do with politics. This has to do with people,” she explained. “I hope maybe this inspires more people to talk to the people in power that you can have an affect over them for the greater good of other people.”
So will the business mogul and famed A-lister try her hand at politics full time?
“People have been asking me, ‘Are you getting into politics?’ and no, I’m still doing me,” she noted. “But I enjoy this. This has fulfilled my heart and since I feel so fulfilled, why would I stop that?”
Johnson, 63, mirrored the sentiment, explaining, “I plan on continuing to magnify this issue. I can’t stop, I can’t stop. I’ve lived it, I’ve walked with them, I’ve cried with them. My life is completely intertwined forever with those who are left behind. So it can’t end here. “
The amazing thing about the pair’s journey together is that when Johnson was first approached by Kardashian West, she admitted she didn’t recognize her name.
“I didn’t know Kim. As soon as I found out who she was, I started getting every magazine I could find,” Johnson, who was incarcerated for 22 years, said. “I started reading everything that I could about her and everyone was amazed and I was amazed too.”
The mother of three as the one to break the news to Johnson that she was being released – a moment neither woman will soon forget.
“I believe she said, ‘You can go home now. Are you ready to go home?’” Johnson recalled. “When she said that I went into full-fledged Pentecostal holy dance. I started screaming and jumping, people were listening.”
At the time, Kardashian West didn’t realize she was the one breaking the news to Johnson, noting, “At first I thought she knew because the news was starting to break and we had to get her on the phone. I said, ‘Wait, you don’t know?’ and she said, ‘Know what?’ and I said, ‘You’re going home.’ And screams and cries.”
The two ladies clearly had a great time during their interview as Kardashian West spent some downtime teaching Johnson how to work Snapchat filters.
“You guys, Alice has never seen a Snapchat filter before so I’m showing her the ropes,” Kardashian West said as they tried out different filters.
For more, watch the clip below:
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